The turf | 22 November 2018

Trainer Dan Skelton and his jockey brother Harry have 100 winners on the board already but for most of us the jumping season proper has only just begun. It wasn’t long, though, before I was reminded of one essential difference between the Flat and jumping codes: the sheer fun element of the winter game. In the Agetur novices’ hurdle at Newbury, the 40-year-old owner-rider David Maxwell looked like being beaten to the line on his French import Ecu De La Noverie when he was headed as the post loomed by the 13–8 favourite Mister Fisher, ridden by the teenage wunderkind James Bowen. Instead the determined amateur conjured one last thrust from his mount and regained the lead to win by a short head at 33–1. There was delight all round, not least from trainer Philip Hobbs’s wife Sarah who had invested £20 on Ecu’s chances. The beaming Maxwell, who had had to waste down to his lightest weight ever at 10st 7lb, declared: ‘I’m now going to eat the horse.’